Seattle Events Calendar
1:00–2:00pm
Music
Jam in the Atrium
Join us in the Atrium for our May Jam, a lively and welcoming afternoon of music and community on Saturday, May 30 from 1–3pm. Led by bassist Bruce Phares, this free, all-ages gathering invites audiences to relax, connect, and enjoy…
2:00–4:00pm
Music
We Will Dance: A Celebration of Resilience, Resistance, and Community
The Tacoma Refugee Choir invites you to an afternoon of music, dancing, and joy. This is a celebration for everyone.Through song and story, we will honor the journeys that have shaped us and the communities that sustain us. Our musical…
2:00–7:00pm
Exhibit | Visual Arts
Parisa Ghaderi | The Wrong Order
ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery
Artist BioParisa Ghaderi is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator. Born and raised in Iran, she earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.Her work has been…
6:30–7:30pm
Music
Symphonic Pops
Foster High School Performing Arts Center
More details on this concert will be announced soon!
7:30–8:30pm
Music
Whitney Mongé
With a voice compared to Tracy Chapman and a style she calls “Americana Soul,” Whitney Mongé captivates audiences with smoky vocals, raw authenticity, and powerful storytelling. From her start as a Seattle street performer to national acclaim, Mongé has forged…
7:30–8:30pm
Music
Christian McBride with SRJO - A Farewell to Artistic Director Michael Brockman
One of the preeminent jazz musicians of our time, bassist Christian McBride, joins us in a season finale that will honor SRJO's co-founder and Artistic Director Michael Brockman upon his retirement. The word prolific might have been created for Christian…
8:00–9:00pm
Music
Hidden and Forbidden: The World of the Medieval Cantrix
Behind the walls of the medieval cloister, there flourished a musical realm hidden from outsiders by circumstance, tradition, or design. While women religious started out with similar opportunities to praise God in song enjoyed by their male counterparts, over the…
8:00–9:00pm
Music
Xian Conducts Gershwin
Spend an evening in the Jazz Age with a musical feast of George Gershwin. Music Director Xian Zhang conducts three works that define his legacy as one of our great composers, effortlessly combining cosmopolitan music with the new language of…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
A Room for Animal Intelligence
We, the animals of the world, invite you to meet with us at SAM. One hundred representatives are waiting to talk about what we see happening on our planet. A few of us share your couch, while others of us…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads
Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park
Get up close with Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2010) at the Olympic Sculpture Park, where you can walk among these monumental sculptures. Consisting of 12 zodiac head sculptures arranged in an arcing semicircle, each animal in Circle of…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Almost Live! (Almost an Exhibit)
The sketch comedy show Almost Live! aired on KING 5 from 1984 to 1999. It poked fun at regional stereotypes, gave us memorable characters and sketches, and launched local celebrities and national careers. It was a renowned success at a…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest
Inspired by the region’s natural beauty and rapidly changing city, this exhibition showcases artists who told the raw story of Seattle in the 20th century. By sharing the Pacific Northwest’s perspective through trending art styles—including Social Realism, Surrealism, and Abstract…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Boren Banner Series: Chloe King
Chloe King’s vividly layered, monumental compositions project a surreal vision of contemporary existence. For their Boren Banner—the artist’s first museum presentation in Seattle—King extends their ongoing inquiry into the politics of the dance floor, exploring Queer nightlife as a site…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Charlene Liu: Scallion
Charlene Liu (b. 1975, Taiwan; based in Eugene, OR) creates paintings, prints, and mixed media installations that blend family histories, cultural references, and decorative patterns. Liu incorporates wide-ranging traditions into her imagery, drawing from nature, food, still life painting, and…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Chris Kallmyer: Song Cycle
Song Cycle is a kinetic sculpture featuring ever-changing poetry. Part imagined, part remembered, and part observed, the revolving text is continually inscribed and reinscribed by a 256-character split-flap readymade sign reminiscent of the arrival and departure boards seen at airports…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Christine Sun Kim: Ghost(ed) Notes
Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, Orange County, California; based in Berlin, Germany) is a groundbreaking artist exploring sound's social and political dimensions. In her first Seattle exhibition at the Henry, Kim presents Ghost(ed) Notes, a mural animating the museum’s east…
All Day
Exhibit | Visual Arts
DISplace
Co-curated by Native Hawaiian artist and kapa-maker, Lehuauakea, and artist and educator, Kanani Miyamoto, this exhibition sheds light on the often-overlooked histories and movement of people who connect Hawaiʻi and the Pacific Northwest since the arrival of the first documented…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
DRIFT: Meadow
Art’s capacity to delight and to make you curious is a characteristic trait of the Netherlands-based studio DRIFT, founded in 2007 by Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn (born 1980) and Ralph Nauta (born 1978). The duo leads a multidisciplinary team that…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Diego Cibelli: Fiori dei Miei Habiti / La Montagne Enchantée
SAM’s ornate Porcelain Room features an evocative ceiling fresco, The Triumph of Valor over Time (ca. 1757) by the greatest Venetian artist of the eighteenth century, Giovanni Tiepolo. Contemporary artist Diego Cibelli presents a site-specific response to the famous painting…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Eric-Paul Riege: ojo|-|ólǫ́
ojo|-|ólǫ́ (pronounced oh-ho hol-ohn) is an exhibition of recent and newly commissioned work by Diné artist Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994, Na’nízhoozhí [Gallup, New Mexico]) that includes sculpture, textile, collage, and video, activated by moments of performance. Across this work, Riege…
All Day
Film
Free Films For Tacoma Students @ The Grand Cinema!
The Grand Cinema is pleased to participate in a pilot program funded by Tacoma Creates. Students and EBT/Quest card holders living within Tacoma city limits may now attend most* public showings at The Grand Cinema. Any student of any age…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Frye Salon + Jonathan Lasker
Frye Salon is both a fixture and a living experiment—an ever-evolving installation that invites fresh perspectives on the museum’s founding-era collection. The gallery features more than one hundred paintings in a floor-to-ceiling presentation mode known as “salon style,” recalling the…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle: Conversations with Our Elders
Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle explores the many roles Elders play in our communities, celebrates their lives and achievements, and honors the wisdom gained with time. This exhibit elaborates on who an Elder can be and what a society that values…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Jonathan Lasker: Drawings and Studies
For over five decades, American artist Jonathan Lasker has approached the elements of painting like a puzzle—taking it apart, turning the pieces, and putting it back together in new ways. Drawings and Studies offers a close look at how his…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Lessons from the Institute of Empathy
Three Empathics have moved into Seattle Art Museum and are a central feature to the latest installation imagined in our African art galleries. The popular and immersive ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space by contemporary artist Saya Woolfalk was first shown in…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Lost & Found: Searching For Home
This exhibition explores the complex relationship between place and belonging through the lens of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) identity. In this exhibit, artists unpack attempts to reconnect with their cultural homelands, through both physical and emotional…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan
At times reminiscent of biological structures and geological formations, Tara Donovan’s work elevates mass-produced industrial materials, such as tar paper, drinking straws, or the silvery metal rings of slinky toys, into mesmerizing installations. Her cumulative process transfigures the mundane into…
All Day
Visual Arts | Museum Tour
Permanent Collection: Nordic Journeys
The National Nordic Museum’s core exhibition, Nordic Journeys, spans centuries, from prehistoric migrations to Viking adventures to modern-day challenges and triumphs. Go on a journey across 1.3 million square miles and twelve thousand years to explore the Nordic region. Then…
All Day
Visual Arts
Proto Kelp
A non-profit, non-commercial, entirely volunteer-run installation gallery in Seattle's Pioneer Square.
All Day
Visual Arts
Qiu Zhijie: Map of the History of Science and Technology
Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park
For the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the artist designed a Map of the History of Science and Technology. In this project, Qiu interweaves scientific and technical advancements in Asia and the West from ancient to contemporary times. The…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Samantha Yun Wall: What We Leave Behind
Samantha Yun Wall’s new paintings use overlapping silhouettes of female figures as portals to unknown spaces and different temporal realms. Impetus for the new body of work is a Korean folk tale in which the Pasque flower is symbolic of…
All Day
Exhibit | Visual Arts
Ten Thousand Things
Curated by award-winning public radio podcast host and former civic poet Shin Yu Pai, Ten Thousand Things is an exploration of the objects that shape our identities, histories, and cultural narratives. Inspired by her experience cataloging artifacts at the Wing…
All Day
Exhibit | Visual Arts
The Sky Is a Diasporic Space by YouthCAN
The Sky is a Diasporic Space is YouthCAN’s newest exhibit, exploring collective memory through art. In response to ongoing attacks on migrant communities, students created original works while learning how creativity has supported solidarity movements globally. The exhibit features block…
All Day
Visual Arts | Exhibit
Tom Lloyd
Artist, activist, and community organizer Tom Lloyd (1929–1996) was an early pioneer of using electric light as an artistic medium. Working in collaboration with an engineer at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Lloyd developed a radically experimental practice in…